In Conversation

The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir on Short-Shorts, LSD, and the “Karma” of Having Teenage Daughters

Bob Weir has removed his shoes and assumed the lotus position, on a couch near the bar at Manhattan’s SoHo Grand Hotel. His eyes drill into me as he answers my questions. “Come Together” by the Beatles is on the P.A. system, and I realize that, as far as rock legends are concerned, Weir, a founding member of the Grateful Dead, is one of the very few who could be considered in the same league.

He’s promoting The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir, a rock-doc biography debuting later that night at the Tribeca Film Festival. The title works on two levels. It incorporates the name of Weir’s signature tune, first recorded on the Dead’s second album, Anthem of the Sun (though archivists may point to the tasty 40-minute jam from September 17, 1972, at the Baltimore Civic Center.) But it’s also a sly comment on Weir’s position to the uninitiated. He was definitely the second-in-command of the Grateful Dead to the bearded, nine-fingered lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia. If Garcia, dead almost 19 years, is the John Lennon, then Weir, very much “the cute one,” is the Paul McCartney.

The Other One is directed by Mike Fleiss, the successful producer of The Bachelor who told me he “doesn’t care if this movie makes a cent.” It’s a labor of love for a decades-long Deadhead, who, recognizing a fellow fan, itches to tell me that he was at the July 13, 1984, show—the night the band brought “Dark Star” back from a three-year hiatus. (Despite the thousands of Dead shows in the books, certain dates are frequently cited as killer shows; no one can disprove if someone says they were there, man.) He says Weir agreed to do the film so he wouldn’t have to write an autobiography.

His film is a cut above the usual slapdash bio-doc. For starters, he had the dough to do it right—recording 60 hours of interview footage with Weir, as well as accruing commentary from some unlikely sources. For every Mike Gordon of Phish, there’s a Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth or Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads. Once you get past the stank of patchouli, body odor, and cannabis, there actually is a great deal of complexity and creativity in the Grateful Dead’s music. Weir’s rich guitar playing—far more variegated than a typical rhythm instrumentalist—and his hard-rockin’ vocals are as key as Garcia’s countrified singing or liquid guitar leads. He continues to tour nonstop with his own groups and occasional reunions with former bandmates.

Below is a condensed version of my conversation with the 66-year-old singer-guitarist who joined the Grateful Dead at age 16, and is now a movie star.

VF Hollywood: In the film, you talk very openly about, in your early years, the use of drugs on the scene: Acid Tests, Ken Kesey, and how it was influential on the band in the beginning. Do you take psychedelics, still, once in a while?

Not much. Every now and again. I haven’t done it so much recently, but over the last decade, for instance, if one of the bands I’m hangin’ with, and all the guys want to take mushrooms. I’m not going to . . . you know, I’ll go there. But not a whole lot.

Have you tried Molly?

[Makes a face]

O.K., so mushrooms and psilocybin are different from the–

The chemical builds are . . . [makes a sour face] Listen, LSD was real informative to me. After a while it. . . stopped being real informative to me. There are people who maintain that I close myself off to what it has to offer…

It’s hard to do it too much and function in society.

I’ve been profoundly disoriented enough on that stuff that I learned how to pretty much profoundly disorient myself on the natch now.

Just as long as you’re not driving at the time, I guess that’s fine.

Yeah. Now, you kind of have to work at it. But if you play with your mind enough, really, you can do that.

Is there a movie star that you always idolized, either as a kid or now?

Bob Weir: In recent years, well, not all that recent, but Brad Pitt. I guess I saw him in Thelma & Louise. I didn’t much notice him in that movie for some reason. I was thinking, Well this guy’s the latest hunk. And he’s probably a decent actor. And then I saw him in Twelve Monkeys. And I was knocked out. Because the Grateful Dead had a caterer who was that guy! He had those affectations and twitches and stuff like that. A little bonkers, but at the same time, a great guy.

Some of your fans feel compelled to travel with the group, sort of chasing something. Have you ever experienced, as a listener, what so many people experience at your shows?

A couple times I was seated in the audience, and the music brought me involuntarily to my feet. One was Ravi Shankar, at the Oakland Memorial Auditorium, and then one was Otis Redding. And we had opened up for him, and we got good seats in the audience, and that was a transcendent experience.

With the Grateful Dead you were a member of a band, and that decisions were made by the band. Today, with RatDog, you’re the main dude. Are there songs from the old days that you’re thankful you don’t have to play anymore?

Well, songs go through cycles for me. And sometimes I lose my passion for some of them. And I just mothball it for a while, and then I’ll be just hanging, not thinking about much, and that song will come back, knocking on the door, “Hey, I’m back. Maybe you haven’t heard this about me yet.”

In addition to the songs you wrote, you brought in a lot of the catchy, poppy rock ’n’ roll cover tunes: “Good Lovin’,” “Dancing in the Streets.” Disco Dead, as they used to call it. A lot of people didn’t like it at first.

We were enjoying it. It didn’t matter to us.

Courtesy of Next Entertainment

I love that period. The 17-minute “Dancing in the Streets,” from May 8, 1977, kills me every time. But those who dismiss the long jams out of hand may think they’re all the same. When you are in the middle of an extended groove are you aware that, Oh, this one’s special? Or is it more like you find out the one you did two nights ago, the fans dug that one?

No, we were, and still are, generally pretty aware of, “O.K., this one’s got some juice tonight.” You know, the next time around, a week or so later, it may be played out, and we might have to put it to bed for a little bit. Or it may still have a fair amount of juice to it. Like I say, they’re cyclical. That said, toward the end of the 80s, early 90s, we got to a point where every night was pretty good, and I guess it was just “practice makes perfect.” I don’t know; with that particular ensemble, we got a real good meld going.

This film goes deep with your relationship to Jerry Garcia, not just personally but musically. And you used an analogy of your rhythm guitar and his lead being like McCoy Tyner’s piano and John Coltrane’s saxophone.

Our animal and the jazz animal is one and the same, really. You state a theme and then take it for a walk in the woods. We just have a different book than the book of jazz standards. Tyner, Bill Evans, Chick Corea—pianists were a big influence.

Why don’t more rhythm guitarists do what you’re doing, a jazz-influenced technique with chord inversions and shading of the lead instrument? You’re not keeping it secret. And it’s not like people don’t like the Grateful Dead. People know that it’s a formula that works.

I’m told I have big hands. I do have some reach.

O.K. That’s a good answer.

And it takes a lot of practice. A lot of real-time practice. The Grateful Dead played for three hours on a given night, plus sound check. I had a lot more opportunity to develop that style. And it’s something that you can only do in real time, in response to or in collusion with the people you’re performing with.

For many years the Grateful Dead had two drummers—Bill Kreutzmann throughout and Mickey Hart most of the time. Nobody else has two drummers. Why did you need two drummers?

That can be a blessing and a curse. One time after a particularly difficult gig, Jerry told those guys it was like playing with a popcorn machine. Because they got busy and were going in different directions and stuff, and there wasn’t much rhyme or reason to it.

When somebody says the name “Bob Weir” of the Grateful Dead, I think of a man in short shorts. Not a lot of people wear shorts on stage, but watch an archive video of you, and you are in shorts.

I have always had a certain aversion to heat. And for me, the name of the game on the stage is “beat the heat.” It’s always July under the lights. And after a while, I got just good and goddamned tired of it. So, shorts. Also, I developed a technique where right before we go on, I’d soak my T-shirt in the beer cooler.

And the other guys made fun of you a little bit for wearing shorts.

Well, you know, it was popular with the ladies.

The film does not shy away from this aspect of your life. For many years, you were a single man on the road, you lived a legendary rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, you met your wife when she was 15 years old and you were in your mid-30s. And now you have two teenage daughters—is that God’s way of laughing at you?

Absolutely.

They’ve heard stories about Dad?

Well, I’ll tell you what—when my first daughter popped out I was told three words: “Karma, karma, karma.” That was the first thing everybody said.